The latest Michael Page Swiss Job Index showed an increase of 33.6% for job offers for the month of January 2017 when compared to the same period last year. This is the highest recorded increase since the first publication of the index in 2012 and nearly three times higher than the average for the period.

The number of jobs advertised in Switzerland between December 2016 and January 2017 was down by 1.3% though the Swiss Job Index states that this a typical seasonal decline for the period.

Charles Franier, Executive Director at Michael Page, commented, “We are already seeing strong demand for specialists in the pharmaceutical, medtech and biotech, FinTech, digital marketing, sales, compliance, audit and risk, as well as for interim managers and providers. This trend should continue in 2017.”

The index shows that the German-speaking region of Switzerland recorded the largest increase year-on-year (34.9%), while French-speaking Switzerland showed an increase of 25.3%. However, job vacancies in each region declined between December 2016 and January 2017 with the German-speaking region seeing a 1.5% decline and the French-speaking region recording a 0.1% decline. The northern region, which is focused on industrial production and health and life sciences, recorded an increase of 1.0% between December 2016 and January 2017.

The northern region was the only region to record an increase between December 2016 and January 2017 (+ 1.0%). The activity of this region is strongly focused on industrial production and health and life sciences sectors. All regions show significant growth on the previous year, led by the Eastern regions (+ 55.0%).